"A testament to this vitality and diversity, the objects on display range from a mine detonator by the young Dutch/Afghani designer Massoud Hassani to a bowl made by transforming desert sand into glass using only the energy of the sun. Also on display are the first 14 video games to enter MoMA’s collection as part of ongoing research on interaction design."

The games on display will be:

Pac-Man (1980)

Tetris (1984)

Another World (1991)

Myst (1993)

SimCity 2000 (1994)

vib-ribbon (1999)

The Sims (2000)

Katamari Damacy (2004)

EVE Online (2003)

Dwarf Fortress (2006)

Portal (2007)

flOw (2006)

Passage (2008)

Canabalt (2009)

While Eve Online, Dwarf Fortress, SimCity2000, The Sims, and Myst will be presented as walkthroughs or demos, the rest will be playable with controllers and headphones.

This is just the initial batch of what the MoMA hopes will be about 40 games that "emphasized not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects—from the elegance of the code to the design of the player’s behavior—that pertain to interaction design."

Applied Design will be open from March 2, 2013 to January 31, 2014. Visit www.moma.org for museum hours and ticket prices.

Comments

Well, Pac-Man and SimCity 2000 can be seen, without too much of a stretch, as interesting allegories about the nature of mankind (the first being about the need to consume, the second about the desire for growth and how insignificant each of us really is on their own), while EVE Online could easily be seen as a psychological experiment on a massive scale, about greed and betrayal, so those are definitely art-y. Heck, you could make paintings about the first two, and the third could be done in a play. The same goes for the others, no doubt.